E3 2002: From Left Field to the Backyard

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Nintendo's fair-weather second party developer jumps into bed with Infogrames.

By IGN Staff

French publisher Infogrames today announced first details for its upcoming Backyard Football game for GameCube and made it official: the makers of ExciteBike 64 and NBA Courtside will be in charge of development. Aiming at a much younger audience than EA's and Sega's football games, Backyard Football teams up with the NFL to give players a kid's view of pro football. Considering that the "Backyard" franchise has sold more than 3.5 million copies on PC and Mac, it should make for an attractive title for GameCube's younger gamers -- as well as parents who want to introduce their young ones to console gaming.

Features

Form teams from 30 Backyard Kids and 10 pro players as kids, including Peyton Manning and Brett Farve

Choose from all 32 NFL teams

Play quick games, single games or a whole season

Track player and team stats in ¿Season Play¿

True 3D environments and multiple camera angles

Gameplay with rumble feedback

As the name suggests, the idea is to let you play with some of the NFL's biggest pros right in your own backyard. If this was a Japanese game, we'd say that the NFL stars are presented in super-deformed form -- but Infogrames calls them kid pro players. Backyard Football features a mini-version of Donovan Mcnabb, Peyton Manning, Terrell Davis, Brett Farve, Ricky Williams, Jeff Garcia, Jevon Kearse, Jerry Rice, Michael Vick and Rich Gannon, in addition to 30 playable regular old backyard kids.

Although the game is certainly simpler than in Madden 2002, for example, the actual gameplay is certainly not dumbed down. You select from all 32 NFL teams, pick a realistic or fantasy playfield, call the plays and control the action in exhibition games or an entire season. In addition to the licensed uniforms, you'll also be able to create your own outfits and assign them to a custom team.

Coming straight off of the sim-oriented NBA Courtside, it will be interesting to see how Left Field Studios is able to tackle a title aimed at a much younger audience. Though based on the Humongous-made franchise, Backyard Football is designed from the ground up for GameCube. A Game Boy Advance version, programmed by Torus Games, is also in the works. It'd be nice if the two linked up -- but given the fact that two different teams are working on the games it would be tough to coordinate the development efforts unless the GBA is simply used as a controller for the GameCube version.